Taming the Hunted Read Free Page B

not
trusting anyone to be what they seemed in this house where vampires and wolves
coexisted. She had no shoes, dirty nails, and short, cropped blonde hair that
cupped her round face.
    “Yours?” she asked Kennard who hadn’t looked up from his
paper at her entrance.
    “I belong to no one,” the girl stated, glancing up.
    Her eyes made Marian take a step back. Baby blue with long
black slits like a cat. The girl turned back to her chore, applying another
layer on the nails. Marian looked to Gabriel as her own mind drew a blank on
this strange girl.
    “She’s a werecat. The only one I have ever met.”
    “A werecat?” Marian had heard stories of them. There were
shifters who could transform into large cats, tigers, lions, but she had never
seen someone who, like a werewolf, was half-cat half-human.
    “Gabriel says that I am special,” the girl commented.
    “Indeed you are,” Kennard told her as he turned the page.
    “You need to feed,” the girl stated, laying Kennard’s foot
back onto the wooden floor and admiring her handiwork as she blew to dry the
nail polish.
    Marian noticed long gouge marks in the wood beneath the
girl’s knees, as if a large dog had pawed at it and torn it up. It confirmed
her theory that she was in the midst of a pack leader’s home and that it was
not a safe place for any hunter, no matter what her skill level.
    “Will you join me?” Kennard asked the girl as he inspected
his nails before rising in one sinuous movement.
    “No,” was all she replied.
    Kennard nodded and seemed to glide weightlessly from the
room, his feet making no noise on the wooden floor.
    “I am Nole.”
    Marian jumped at being addressed.
    The girl smiled. Her little teeth, like Gabriel’s, were too many and too sharp. Gabriel moved around Marian and opened his arms to the
little werecat. She came forward and let him pick her up and place a kiss on
her cheek. Nole giggled, the sound for once sounding like the child she was.
    “I will go and welcome the pack home,” Nole said.
    Gabriel placed her on the ground again, and she turned and
skipped out the door.
    “Unnerving, isn’t she?” Gabriel commented, leaning on the
doorframe.
    “That’s one word for it. Another of your rescued pets?” She
had meant to refer to Kennard, but the words had come out harsher than she
intended.
    Gabriel took it in his stride. “Nole comes and goes as she
pleases. She belongs to no one and we have no idea where she came from. She
just turned up one day and made herself at home.”
    Marian looked up as a small ginger and white cat walked past
the windowsill.
    “She is more childlike than she will admit though,” Gabriel
added as an afterthought.
    Marian watched his face. For the first time that night, she
thought she saw another side to the man, a softening. The bond between him and
Nole was strong, that was clear in the way the girl acted around him. Letting
him hold and kiss her. It could have even been that he saw her as a daughter.
The thought made Marian’s heart flutter, wolves were not known for their
nurturing nature.
    “Come on, we should go before my mates get home.”
    He gestured for her to leave the room before him, and once
again she was forced to brush against his chest as she passed him, trying not
to stroke her hand down his taut body as she did.
    They made it halfway across the entry when a noise outside
alerted her that they were no longer alone. There was a crash as the front door
opened, admitting half a dozen men who were laughing and shaking rain from
their hair.
    Gabriel moved faster than she could track. His large body
shoved her to the side of the stairs before taking a protective stance in front
of her. She couldn’t see the men around his broad shoulders. God, it had to be
illegal to smell that great. Her senses were alive with adrenalin, making each
breath a deep intake of sweet musk.
    Gabriel appeared to have noticed none of her sudden
stillness. One arm held onto the railing so he almost